Do animals have souls? - Stories that prove they have and share the same empathy we do (or should), page 3

Originally posted by buddha
When the fish sees me in the room
it knows I feed it and will try to get my attention.
And people try to tell you fish don’t have a memory!

I've seen friends' Betta fish go bonkers in their tank when they see their human come home. It's like they're feverishly running excited laps & try to jump out of the tank at them, "OMG, you'rehome!you'rehome!you'rehome!you'rehome!HIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!" Bettas seem to have really loyal attachments to their people, so memory? Of course they have it :lol

reply to post by lonegurkha

This made me cry a little. In the summer of '04, I had to put down one of my cats, my best furry buddy. She was about 9 then, and our other cat was about 15. We'd had both for almost a decade at that point, these were my childhood cats, and each was the others BFF.
After we found out our younger cat, C, was riddled with cancer & tumors, we decided to have her euthanized instead of continuing to watch her slowly waste away. When we came back from the vet without her, the older cat, P, sat at the door & just waited. And waited. And waited. We think he sat there overnight waiting, because he was still there the next morning, too. He eventually went and sat in front of the TV & stared up top at the spot on it that she used to lay on to nap. He did that every day for several weeks, quietly yowling this sad, cry-like meow from time to time. After probably close to a month, he was an outright depressed lump, laying in the same spot by the TV all day, every day, not moving. There were some stretches that we thought he'd died of a broken heart because he hadn't moved in so long. He'd dropped from about 10 lbs down to a little over 3 in that time frame, getting him to eat was so difficult. He'd also begun pulling his fur out by the mouthfuls to the point of damaging his skin. The vet said he was DEFINITELY depressed & grieving his friend. Because of his older age, the vet was very hesitant to give him kitty uppers, and suggested we consider looking for a new friend for him, to help him get past the grief stage.
Eventually, we did find a new friend to adopt for him, A, and his self-destructive hair-ripping dropped, although it didn't stop. He was very...dare I say reluctant to interact with the new friend, they've always been on somewhat icy terms. The hair pulling didn't stop entirely until we'd found a stray kitten outside in a storm one night that ended up being VERY close in personality to her. There's almost 15 years between them in age, and they're inseparable. The spring in his step came back, he gained most of his weight back, and his even fur regrew in the spots we thought would be permanently bald. It's eerie sometimes. W acts so much like C did to the point of me calling him by her name sometimes. I wonder about reincarnation sometimes, and sometimes wonder if it's possible she came back as W.

Geez, I cried reading your experience with your dogs, and now I'm crying all over again. I guess I never really dealt with all of it as well as I thought I had back then

edit on 9/14/2012 by Nyiah because: (no reason given)